To Write Their Names in the Sand

Thank you, Carly & Sam, for the beautiful picture. How amazing is the internet - that a family in Australia would take time to do this for families they've never met?

http://namesinthesand.blogspot.com/2008/11/riley-lebrun.html

A few tiny baby knits

A blog post to get my mom off my back. ;) Mom, I hope you haven't given up and you still check once in a while!

Small-ish size longies. Yarn is Gaia organic merino dyed by Kim at Western Sky Knits. I have just barely enough trim left to make the brim of a tiny hat.


A newborn size soaker I finished a long time ago and haven't gotten around to taking a picture of. Still needs a drawstring, those are so quick for tiny little waist sizes. The yarn is 3-ply PureWool I dyed myself with acid dyes. Probably the only thing I've dyed so far that I kind of like!


Lastly, my little blanket. Some cotton yarn I had hanging around. It's 55 sts by about 60 or so rows, a little bit bigger than 12x12.

Land of the UFOs

That's what my house is. Sorry, I can't seem to get anything finished anymore, much less photographed and properly blogged....

Oh, UFOs = unfinished objects.

So, here is about all I have to show off....some shorts for Evelyn.


A skirty for a friend's darling 2-year-old girl. Wonderfully soft bulky BFL, this was actually a very quick knit!! Even with the giant ruffle, lol.






Hopefully blogging little tiny baby knits soon....although my yarn stash is severely lacking in colors other than pink. So, I'm waiting on some new pretty yarn, or the energy to dye some of my own (that may be a while).

I have been knitting....

Just not doing much blogging. Here is Evelyn's latest wooly outfit - a skirt knit out of 100PureWool dyed by Lamar at ...a time to dye. The colorway is called Anne Carson, named after her youngest daughter. I loved the pink and purple colors!! Perfect with the bit of gray added in. Lamar did a fabulous job dyeing as she always does.



Enough with the photos...time for the swing!!


Shorts underneath


Color is brighter than this IRL.


The pattern (minus the shorts underneath) is a new one I was able to test for a wonderful online friend Heather. The giant fluffy ruffle sure ate up the yarn! Not fond of the big holes left by the yarnovers, but you can just pretend you don't see those. The skirt is sooo soft and fits nicely. Great for wearing to church this summer.

Coming soon (well, maybe not so soon...) - I have shorts finished for Olivia (no pictures, haven't even blocked them yet) and yarn I dyed myself - don't get excited, it's rather ugly. ;)

Mother's Day Socks

Wow, I am a really bad blogger! No posts since April 2nd? Well, I have finished a few things since then, but nothing has been terribly exciting. Life gets in the way of knitting sometimes. That's usually a good thing, though.

Here are my mom's socks - a Mother's Day gift that was, unfortunately, only 75% complete on Sunday morning! Oops. Work got in the way. Plus I am painfully slow at socks. I did finish them at about 1pm, so Mom was able to take home a complete set. I'm glad they fit!








Yarn: Parvana Merino Sock from Selah, dyed by Julie in her Cherry Blossom colorway. Pattern is from Creative Knitting mag May 2008 - Ribbed Anklets. I used size 1/2.25 mm needles - my first time with Harmony DPNs from Knit Picks. They are great!

First socks, finally finished!!

Zen String Serendipity Sport in the Patchouli colorway. I was thisclose to running out of yarn, and actually made 1 sock two rows shorter. I don't think you can really tell though. ;) I am quite happy with how they turned out! Now I know that in the future, I don't need as long of a heel flap - that is about the only place they don't fit well. The pattern is from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns - it gives basic patterns in a number of different sizes and gauges.

I have been bitten by the sock bug and can't wait to cast on pair number 2!

A close of the heel flap, in progress (the color is truer to the top pictures).


It's actually quite annoying to take a picture of your own feet. Apparently, doing that for me is something my husband won't do. He thinks I am weird, for a multitude of reasons. ;)

"Yarn."

Is what Evelyn got from me for her birthday. According to her, that is. I finished this sweater the day before her 2nd birthday, and decided to wrap it up as a gift to her. She enjoyed trying it on, and in general she seems to enjoy wearing her hand-knits. I thought she might like it as a birthday gift. Turns out, it's pretty dull to get a sweater instead of a toy! ;)

So when she opened the sweater, I asked her "what did you get Evelyn?" She plainly stated: "YARN." And tossed the sweater aside. I asked her again later, and got the same response. Well, she is right, anyway!

The sweater is a Knitting Pure & Simple pattern, Baby Pullover. The yarn is a superwash wool from Granby, Colorado - a birthday present from my grandparents. It has a bit of variation in the blue color and it's very pretty on her. Fits well, too. I need to get a picture taken, but she moves too fast much of the time. ;)

Here comes the Easter Bunny....

I bet you didn't know the Easter Bunny could knit, did you? ;)







The egg pattern is from Curly Purly and the carrots are from MagKnits. Carrot yarn is Cascade 220 for the orange (thanks Mom!) and the green is Wool of the Andes. Eggs are Paton's Merino, leftover acrylic, Zen String Serendipity and 100 Pure Wool "Hardly." All leftovers from other projects. All very easy and quick to knit! The acrylic yarn was not terribly fun to knit with, the egg looks a little bit wonky too. I just have a pair of slippers to finish (1 slipper is nearly done) and instead of making slippers for Evelyn I decided I would just try and finish her sweater for a birthday/Easter gift. It seems their baskets will have plenty in them as it is!

Indoctrinated from birth to smile for the camera, Evelyn politely requested "Mommy picture puppy pwease." Who could resist?

Long time no blog

Here's a quick in progress picture:




Zen String Serendipity Sport in Patchouli colorway. The pattern is from Ann Budd's Basic Pattern book. I've turned the heel, finished the heel gusset and now I'm just knitting 'round and 'round until I get it long enough for my size 9 feet, then decrease and finish! Oh yeah, and sock #2.

Also on the needles: many eggs and carrots (thanks for the orange yarn, Mom!). Back to the knitting now!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Olivia usually leaves off the "day" - she just says "Happy Valentine!" She also has been led to believe that the day is all about chocolate, and was telling us on Monday that she'd be getting chocolate. How she knew that, I don't know! But, the daycare lady at the gym did give her some M&Ms, so she was right!

These pants have been done for a few days, but I haven't had a chance to post this picture. I don't have any "action" shots taken ~ maybe this afternoon if the monkey girls actually take a nap.

Yarn is 3-ply 100PureWool custom dyed by Kim of Western Sky Knits. I believe she's pretty new to the yarn dyeing world, but she's great! She lives on a real working ranch in Montana with lots of horses. Sounds like a dream for me!



I'm quite happy that I got an accurate picture of the colors indoors - we finally had some sunlight a few days ago, and I plopped my trusty posterboard inside of the igloo play tent for filtering the light...I tweaked the photo a bit in photoshop but not too much! Not bad for indoors. Still missing my D100 a lot, sniff sniff. She'll be home soon. :)

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of noise upstairs...better go "remind" the girls that it's naptime.

A couple of WIPs

Should be done soon. Finished pics to come later. :)

Mommy, I love my sweater!

It's wonderful to be appreciated, isn't it? :) I finished this sweater for Olivia about a week ago, and had to get it washed/blocked and she was dying to wear it before it was even dry. It's a handwash-only yarn, so I didn't really want her wearing it to daycare, so wearing it to church on Sunday was perfect. Now, if only I could get her to stop hugging the doggy while wearing it....

Here's the sweater!




The details:

• Pattern KP&S Children's Tunic #232
• Size 2-4 years; modified to be shorter in length
• Yarn: Aran blue-faced leiceister dyed by Selah, Lilac City colorway
  

Why I have 2 kids

And why it is advantageous for my knitting! :)

I started with this beautiful Zen String - Parfait colorway on Bliss bulky. I wanted to make a hat for Olivia - she hasn't gotten one yet, and she needed a second hat. I wanted it to have earflaps, be very warm, and have a crazy cute top to it.

Yarn:


So, I begin searching on Ravelry for a pattern. I can't really find any one pattern that I like, but I decide to try my hand at combining 2. For the earflap part, I use the same Ky Baby Knits pattern I used for Aubrie's little pink hat. For the top, I wanted to do the "jester" top from this baby hat. All I needed was a multiple of 6 in order to do the top.

It all worked out quite nicely - I had a gauge of 3 sts/inch on size 8 needles (a nice thick fabric) and measured Olivia's head at an amazing 22" circumference, I could follow the "newborn" sizing on the hat and use 60 sts. Perfect! No need to fudge where the earflaps should go and such. The pattern calls for the strings to be a 4-stitch I-cord but I found that too bulky so I went with 3. I also made the earflaps 12 stitches instead of 10.

I didn't really have a clue on how tall to make the hat - I settled on about 5-5.5 inches. With bulky yarn you get there quickly! I divided the top, kitchener stitch to make the jester top, and some creative "sewing" to close the hole in the top. Voila! Hat done. Took me just about a day.

Hmm. The hat was very cute, but awfully short. The kitchener jester top took up a lot of the hat's height, and I hadn't thought of that. It didn't look like it would even come close to fitting over Olivia's head and actually covering her ears.

But, lucky for me, I have a slightly smaller child too! The hat fits Evelyn nicely - it could use a bit more height, too, but I really don't feel like frogging the whole thing and redoing it.

So, I CO hat #2 and make the top ridiculously tall. Probably close to 7". It looks huge as I'm knitting it, like it would fit Brad. But the end result is...





Evelyn is saying "cheese," in case you couldn't tell. The girls are posing on Evelyn's brand new toddler bed! She's really a big girl now. :(

Big news around here!

None of it is the slightest bit knitting related though. ;)

Brad went back to work yesterday! He is walking without crutches and can actually get his poor swollen foot into a work boot. He worked a few hours yesterday, took some cows to Mandan and looked at one of ours (#12 is sick again!). Today he says his foot is hurting already and he's coming home for an afternoon dentist appointment.

Evelyn has peed AND pooped in the potty!! Not consistently, but still, it's a start! And she's already figured out the "I'll try sitting on the potty to see if I get M&Ms" trick. Little stinker.

I bought plane tickets to visit my dad in Florida in February! I can't wait. The girls and I will have so much fun playing on the beach all day long. We are in desperate need of some Vitamin D sun therapy around here.

Just so Olivia isn't left out, the biggest thing in her world right now is that Christmas decorations around town are being taken down. ;) I swear she remembers where each and every one was. "Mommy, they take the angel down? And the bell?" In Olivia's world, Christmas is "tomorrow" so it's okay. hehe!

Off to work. Inventory time. Ugh!

What the best dressed chickens are wearing today

Ear warmer hat from Ky Baby Knits knit in Swish Superwash colors ballerina and bubblegum.



Knitting Pure & Simple Children's Tunic #232 in Blue Faced Leiceister dyed by Selah in Lisa's Lilac City colorway.



Little Turtle Knits King of all Wild Things crown in Cascade 220.

If I got off the computer, and ignored the piles of laundry and the messy living room, I could probably finish the sweater today or tomorrow. Hopefully I will have a pair of cute hats to share soon too. And I make no promises whatsoever about the laundry. I just can't figure out how to get it to fold itself....